LifeRing Inc

Nonprofit profile at a glance

EIN
943267919
IRS 990 coverage
2025–2025
Forms available
Form 990 2025, Form 990-EZ 2024
Location
Hayward, CA, USA
Phone
8008114142
Rating
69
Verdict
SUPPORTED
Rating confidence
Moderate
Sector
Alcohol, Drug and Substance Abuse, Dependency Prevention and Treatment

Official website

Reported finances

Revenue
$103,619
Expenses
$60,326
Assets
$219,008
Liabilities
$0

Source: IRS Form 990. Selected filing: tax year 2025. Amounts in USD.

Leadership & pay

12 people listed

Highest reported compensation

  • Robert Stump (Foundation Mgr.): $29,447 total reported compensation

Source: IRS Form 990. Selected filing: tax year 2025. Names and roles reflect this filing, not necessarily current officeholders.

Overview

Mission

LifeRing is an abstinence-based, worldwide network of individuals seeking to live in recover from addiction to alcohol or to other non-medically indicated drugs. In LifeRing, we offer each other peer-to-peer support in ways that encourage personal growth and continued learning through personal empowerment. Our approach is based on developing, refining, and sharing our own personal strategies for continued abstinence and crafting a rewarding life in recover. In short, we are sober, secular, and self-directed.

What it reported doing in 2025

Community Growth: Global ReachWe're proud to announce a record-breaking year for LifeRing! Our meetingmembership has seen a 43.9% increase in community participation. This remarkablegrowth signifies a truly vibrant and expanding network of support. Our LifeRingcollaboration teams are stronger than ever, with new key players enhancingoperational efforts and resource development, further boosting our capacity to serve.Operational Growth and Strategic Vision: Building Better ResourcesLifeRing continues to grow in alignment with our Strategic Plan to realize our vision to be global leaders in positive recovery support. The most substantial change this year has been the update of LifeRings digital infrastructure.August marked a milestone in LifeRing global accessibility. We redesigned our website and moved management over to an outside vendor to ensure seamless functionality and monitor our content to ensure ADA compliance. This frees upour tech team to focus on the development of more robust communication channels.To better serve our global community, LifeRing contracted an outsidevendor to manage our meeting calendar and meeting attendance verification.Our new universal calendar automatically displays meetings based on the viewerstime zone and allows for detailed meeting descriptions allowing our members toshop for the meetings that best align with their personal recovery program.In addition, LifeRing has upgraded our meeting attendance verification from amanual process to a self-managed process. Automating this process has empoweredour members to manage their attendance records and individualize who receivesreports. Participants now have immediate access to their attendance records ratherthan waiting for verifications to be manually generated.

Operating model

Revenue model
Donor-supported. 100% of the money available for current operations came from contributions and gifts.
Distribution model
Direct operator. The filing allocates 100% of reported program-service expenses outside its grant, affiliate-payment, and member-benefit lines. This expense classification does not rule out separately announced grant awards.

The verdict

SUPPORTED - The filed numbers largely add up and revenue comfortably covers expenses. A relatively small share of available resources goes toward mission work and some filing-based governance responses are negative or unanswered.

Rating breakdown

  • Financial Efficiency: 58
  • Transparency & Controls: 92
  • Accountability: 58
  • Sustainability: 72
  • Growth: 60

Detailed rating inputs

Financial Efficiency

  • Mission deployment rate: 52.7%; rating input score 53
  • Program expense ratio: 86.9%; rating input score 87
  • Fundraising efficiency: Limited

Transparency & Controls

  • Consistency checks: 100%; rating input score 100; 64th percentile among comparable filings
  • Pay-setting controls: Limited
  • Foreign activity oversight: Limited
  • Grant itemization coverage: Limited
  • Major donor itemization: Yes; rating input score 100
  • Related-party transparency: Limited

Accountability

  • Independent voting board: 100%; rating input score 100; 64th percentile among comparable filings
  • Governance controls: 0 of 8 controls in place; rating input score 0
    • Conflict-of-interest policy: Fail
    • Whistleblower policy: Fail
    • Document-retention policy: Fail
    • CEO compensation review process: NotApplicable
    • Other executive compensation review process: Fail
    • Form 990 shared with the board: Fail
    • Board meeting minutes documented: Fail
    • Audit committee oversight: Missing
    • Independent financial-statement audit: Fail

Sustainability

  • Operating margin: 41.8%; rating input score 87; 87th percentile among comparable filings
  • Total-asset coverage ratio: 3.63; rating input score 73; 73rd percentile among comparable filings
  • Liabilities to assets ratio: 0; rating input score 77; 77th percentile among comparable filings
  • Officer compensation ratio: 48.8%; rating input score 4; 4th percentile among comparable filings

Growth

  • Program expense growth: Limited
  • Revenue growth: 6.3% per year; rating input score 100; 54th percentile among comparable filings
  • Asset growth: 12.6% per year; rating input score 100; 70th percentile among comparable filings

Details

  • Where the money goes: 52.7% of revenue deployed · 86.9% of spending went to programs
  • Governance: 12 of 12 board members independent · 0 of 8 filing controls reported
  • Programs: 1 filed program accomplishment · $52K in reported program spending
  • Leadership: top reported pay $29K · 12 people listed
  • Consistency: 20 of 20 current checks pass
  • Schedules: 3 filed schedules · includes major donors
  • Contacts: How to reach this organization
  • Money network: 2 filed money-flow records
  • Grant readiness: Federal tax and exclusion status, award history, and grant-maker relationships.
  • People: Everyone the filings name, and which of them the filings identify by more than a name.

Key Signals

Signals prioritize questions for review. They are not findings of misconduct.

  • Review — Financial Efficiency: Mission deployment rate scored 53/100.
  • High — Accountability: Governance controls: 7 of 7 not reported.
  • High — Sustainability: Officer compensation ratio scored 4/100.